


The Secrets You Can't Keep

by embroiderama



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Community: ohsam, Diabetes, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Illnesses, Stanford Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-03
Updated: 2011-12-03
Packaged: 2017-10-26 20:12:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/287390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/embroiderama/pseuds/embroiderama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean knew almost everything about Sam, but after Stanford there was one vitally important thing that Sam neglected to tell Dean. Sam was used to keeping secrets, but keeping this one was a bad idea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Secrets You Can't Keep

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for [](http://shangrilada.livejournal.com/profile)[**shangrilada**](http://shangrilada.livejournal.com/)'s [prompt](http://ohsam.livejournal.com/340216.html?thread=2070776#t2070776) at the [](http://ohsam.livejournal.com/profile)[**ohsam**](http://ohsam.livejournal.com/) [Fic Challenge](http://ohsam.livejournal.com/339855.html). Thank you to [](http://nelle816.livejournal.com/profile)[**nelle816**](http://nelle816.livejournal.com/) for looking it over for me.

Some days, many days, Sam couldn't stop thinking about secrets. He hated secrets, thoroughly despised them, the way most of his friends back at Stanford hated things like globalization and puppy mills and Creed. And it had to be some kind of fucked-up fate that had Sam living with secrets, living _inside_ secrets his entire life. For his whole childhood it was lying about where they lived, how many schools he'd been to, whether or not his father was home and then lying about what Dad did for a living, lying about everything that was consistently true in his life. Lying about his plans for the future.

Then, at Stanford, he found out the difference between having one or two people who knew the truth and having nobody who wasn't outside the lie. Among the shitload of people Sam studied with and hung out with and partied with, he had a couple friends he wanted to tell. He wanted to be able to say, "This is what my life is, this is the truth of what's out there, but I'm still me. I'm still here." And he had Jess who he loved — _loves_ — and every time he lied to her it hurt a little more, everything he couldn't share with her carving a distance between them that he ached to fill.

But it wasn't okay, could never be okay to share the family secrets, never be okay to risk having people — having Jess — write him off as crazy. And now that life was gone, up in flames and out in smoke, gone like it had never existed anywhere other than inside Sam's head, and he didn't have to lie about those things anymore, not to anybody who mattered.

Now he was back with Dean, who knew just about everything about the first eighteen years of Sam's life, who didn't even ask him to lie and say he was okay, and there was a whole new lie. The one thing that Jess and his good friends at Stanford — hell, most of his casual friends there — knew about Sam, was the one thing he couldn't quite figure out how to mention to Dean. It's not like it was a big deal. Well, Sam admitted to himself, it _had_ been a big deal for just a little while, and it _could_ be a big deal, but it didn't need to be. He was smart, he could take care of himself. He wasn't keeping a secret from Dean so much as just not telling him something he didn't really need to know.

But Sam knew that was a lie. He could see Jess every time he closed his eyes, and she would kick his ass for not telling Dean, for not letting Dean look out for him just in case Sam screwed up when it came to looking after himself. She probably would've made sure Dean knew before Sam ever left with him if it hadn't all been such a surprise, the two of them rushing out the door, if it hadn't been late at night.

The problem was that Dean worried so much. He tried to hide it, acting bluff and stupid and raunchy, but Sam could feel the worry for Dad and for Sam himself radiating from Dean sometimes, worry like Dean was responsible for the both of them, for everyone. And Jess, with nothing like the burden Dean had — Jess with her indulgent parents, Jess who'd never worried about much beyond getting decent grades — had worried about Sam sometimes so visibly that he wanted to beg her to just relax. Sam couldn't put that worry on Dean, too.

Besides, he'd had close to three years to adjust. He knew how to take care of himself, and he had a couple months worth of supplies. He could figure out how to get more when he needed them — maybe even tell the truth, mostly. That would be refreshing.

In a stall in the rest stop bathroom, Sam held his backpack between his feet and juggled his alcohol wipe and his monitor and testing strips, not even half of the crap that was part of his life now. He closed his eyes and wished for the touch of Jess's hand on his shoulder. She'd been there right from the beginning, and a stupid, selfish part of him sometimes hated her for leaving him to deal with it all without her.

~~~

Sam's first semester at Stanford was, in many ways, not as difficult as he'd imagined it might be. His classes weren't easy, but his advisor hadn't let him register for anything very complicated, so as long as he showed up in class and read the material he didn't feel like he was in any kind of danger of not getting good grades. The social thing was awkward for the first day, but then he just gave himself over to the world of the dorm and making new friends was as easy as breathing. His roommate Justin wasn't anybody Sam would want to hang out with, but he wasn't horrible. Sam worked fifteen hours each week shelving books at the library, and it was all okay. Manageable.

And the freedom of not having Dad on his ass, not having to spend his weekend trekking around the woods or some desert trying to find something to kill, was amazing. He missed Dean, missed him with an ache that surprised him sometimes, but there were so many things to distract Sam, so many people and activities and new responsibilities, that he never noticed the ache for very long.

Then the semester ended in a flurry of final papers and exams, and one spectacular party where he met a gorgeous blonde girl, tall enough that he didn't have to strain his back bending down to kiss her — which was a good thing considering they spent most of the party making out on the porch of _somebody_ 's off-campus apartment. Her name was Jess, and her hips were just rounded enough to feel great under Sam's hands as he held her close. When her friends showed up to drag her away, she pulled a pen out of her purse and wrote her number on his hand. "Call me next semester," she whispered against Sam's lips.

Before Sam had a chance to really think about things the dorm was emptying out, everybody going home for winter break. Sam thought about Dean and Dad in some motel room _somewhere_ , and then he thought about Dad's last words to him. He didn't have a home to go to, so he'd just stay. The dorms remained open, at least, and Sam wasn't the only person left. There were some foreign students who couldn't get home and a few other random strays like Sam.

Sam's boss at the library had been impressed enough with his work during the semester that when she heard Sam was staying on campus for break she offered him a temporary job, not using work-study funds, helping out with a big reorganization project. Still, the dining halls were all closed over break, and Sam needed to save as much as he could for next semester's books, so he spent the break living on ramen and dollar menu fast food, plus coffee from the staff break room, which Sam had never been allowed into during the semester. There was nothing Sam needed to study, and nothing to do socially, so Sam mostly just worked and slept, catching up on all the sleep he didn't get during the semester.

Just as Sam was starting to get used to the quiet of the empty dorm and mostly-empty library, everybody came back to campus and classes started up for the spring semester. And the dining halls opened back up, which was _awesome_ because Sam was incredibly sick of ramen and tiny cheeseburgers that never really filled him up and left him thirsty all the time from so much salt. The cafeteria food was like gourmet heaven in comparison, and Sam took full advantage of it during the few days lull before classes started.

His check from working almost-full-time at the library for a few weeks was amazing, more money than Sam had ever earned before in his life. He was able to buy his books and supplies and put the rest in his bank account. He needed to call up Jess, and she seemed like the kind of girl who might want to go on real dates with dinner and flowers and stuff.

He dialed Jess's number on his cell six times and hit cancel six times before he finally let the call go through, but she was as cool on the phone as she'd been in person, and they made a date to go eat at a Thai place the next Saturday. She was in the dorm building right next to Sam's, so they agreed to meet out front at six — Jess actually had a car, so they could drive to somewhere more interesting than the usual student hangouts.

Then classes started, and Sam was back to the routine of class and studying and work. Sam's course-load wasn't too bad; his advisor still wouldn't let him register for anything advanced until he got some of the core requirements out of the way. For some reason, though, it all felt a lot more difficult than it had in the fall — getting up and running around campus to his classes, going to work at the library and walking around putting up books, getting started with new professors and new textbooks.

Sam pushed through the week, sometimes having to shove himself out of bed with one of his mental recordings of special John Winchester wake-ups. _Up and at'em boys. Get your lazy butts out of bed!_ He finally gave himself a break from studying on Friday when he couldn't keep his focus on the books in front of him and his head hurt from trying. The only thing he could really focus on was food, so he dragged himself to the closest dining hall and filled up on a bunch of slices of mediocre pizza, plus a salad and a bowl of ice cream.

After his early dinner, he went back to his room and crashed, just waking up every now and then to take a piss or drink some water.

"Dude," his roommate grumbled at him as he walked back from the bathroom for the fourth time. "There something wrong with your prostate or what?"

Sam rubbed his head sleepily. "Huh?"

"I haven't seen anybody piss so much at night since I had to share a room with my grandpa."

"Shut up." Sam crawled back into his too-short bed and turned his back on his roommate. There was nothing wrong with a guy wanting to stay hydrated.

In the morning, Sam dragged himself out of bed just in time to hit the dining hall before the end of brunch. He sat at a table with some girls from his building, and they laughed when he came back to the table with his tray covered in french toast and eggs and bacon, plus two glasses of orange juice. Sam couldn't help being hungry — he thought he was maybe having another growth spurt which was kind of crazy considering he was already taller than almost everybody he knew, but he couldn't seem to shovel enough food in his face, and still his jeans were getting looser instead of tighter.

After brunch, Sam took a shower and then sat down to try to study for a few hours before it was time to get ready to meet Jess. Trouble was, he was still having trouble concentrating, even with all the extra sleep he'd gotten the night before. The headache was back, making his stomach turn, and finally he had to stumble past his roommate to the bathroom and puke. He splashed some water on his face and headed back to his bed to try to get his shit together before the evening — no way was he missing out on his date with Jess.

"You hung over?"

Sam shook his head at his roommate and climbed under the covers. "Ate too much at breakfast, I guess."

"Pussy." Justin laughed, no heat behind his word, and Sam dropped off to sleep.

What Sam remembered of the hours after that was vague — waking up feeling sick again and barely making it to the bathroom on time, curling up on the floor feeling so tired that breathing was almost too much work and getting up was definitely beyond his ability. He heard a pounding from far away and then some people talking, arguing maybe, then knocking from much closer and somebody calling his name. He remembered hands on him — his shoulder, his face — and then more hands turning him and picking him up, the vague thought of _Dad? Dean?_. Wheels and lights, more people saying his name, darkness.

Early the next morning, after the doctors came to Sam's room in the hospital and told him that he was diabetic now, Type 1 diabetic, that he'd almost died from high blood sugar and that he'd have to take medicine and be careful about what he ate forever, _forever_ , he found out what had happened the evening before. He was sitting in his bed, staring at the IVs in his hands and trying to figure out if everything he'd been told was real, when a nurse looked into the room and asked if he felt up to a visitor.

He didn't think Dad or Dean could have found out; the emergency contact information Sam had given the school was totally bogus. He had no clue who might be visiting, but he just nodded his head because he couldn't think of what else to say. When Jess walked in the room, her hair bright and loose around her shoulders in contrast to the nervous smile on her face, Sam ducked his head.

"God, I'm so sorry about messing up our date. How'd you track me down here?"

Jess reached out and placed a small stuffed bear wearing a Stanford shirt on Sam's lap and then sat down next to his bed. "What the hell, Sam, you don't have anything to apologize for. And I followed the ambulance here yesterday evening, but they told me I wouldn't be able to see you until this morning so I went home. Oh, and I got your stupid roommate to let me grab some clean clothes and stuff for you, too." She held up a plastic bag and then let it rest on the floor.

"What — I don't know what happened. Before I got here, I mean."

"Well, you didn't show up to meet me out in front of the building, so when I called a couple times and you didn't answer I got pretty pissed off." She smiled, shrugging her shoulders guiltily. "So, I stormed around your building trying to figure out which room you were in, and when I found the right one your roommate was like, 'Sorry babe, he's sick. Locked himself in the bathroom an hour ago, don't think I want to go in there if you know what I mean.'" Jess shook her head, looking angry now. "And I didn't know if _he_ was being an asshole or if you were being a jerk and hiding from me, so I pushed inside and knocked on the door. Kind of a lot."

"I'm sorry." Sam wanted to cover his face from the humiliation, but he figured it would only make him look more idiotic.

"No, look, you didn't answer, and it felt _weird_ , felt wrong, so I sort of popped the lock with my student ID card. You were — you looked like you were really sick and your breathing was bad so I called 911. You know, you really should've told your roommate that you're diabetic."

Sam felt his mouth gaping open. "They told you? But — "

"No, nobody would tell me anything, but my big brother's diabetic, and I can recognize ketoacidosis. Unlike your roommate, who had no clue whatsoever since you were stupid enough to keep it to yourself."

"Keto what?" Sam shook his head, confused and overwhelmed. "Jess, I didn't know. They — they just told me that I'm — that I have that now." Sam felt tears building in his eyes and breathed in hard through his nose, blinking them away because even if this gorgeous girl he barely knew had seen him passed out he wasn't going to add insult to injury by crying in front of her.

"Oh, shit. Shit, you just got diagnosed? You didn't know?" Her big, blue eyes were wide with horror.

"Um, yeah. Kind of a crappy morning." Sam looked back down at his hands, at the fluids dripping into his body. "I guess we should just forget this whole date thing since I'm kind of fucked up right now."

Jess stood up, and Sam thought she was going to leave, but she just hopped up and sat on the bed next to Sam's feet. "Look, if you don't want to see me again considering I was a bitch to you a minute ago, I totally get that. And I know we don't really know each other beyond the small talk we got through before we, you know, found better things to do with our mouths." She grinned wickedly. "But I have a habit of trusting my first impressions of people, and I like you."

Sam swallowed hard. "I like you too. And I'll forgive you for yelling at me on one condition."

Jess lifted one arched eyebrow. "That is?"

"Give me a do-over on dinner? Next weekend?"

"It's a date!" Jess knelt up on the bed and leaned in to plant a kiss on Sam's cheek before hopping off the bed. "Well, I'll let you rest. Just, do whatever they tell you to do, okay? It's important."

Sam nodded, thoughts of his new reality returning with a flood of anxiety. "I will." Sam closed his eyes and didn't open them again until he heard the door open and close again.

The rest of the day was filled with intervals of boredom interspersed with visits from the doctor, a nurse practitioner, a social worker, more people than Sam could keep track of. The thought of calling Dean, having him come handle everything, was almost painfully tempting, but the idea of Dad knowing he was weak like this — Sam couldn't let that happen.

So he tried to pay attention as the nurse showed him how to use a blood glucose monitor and told him how often he'd have to use it, what the numbers should be. She taught him how to inject himself with insulin, and at least that wasn't as big a deal as she seemed to think it might be. It was a skinny little needle, nothing like getting ten stitches in his back, flat on his stomach on a motel room bed. Nothing like stitching up somebody himself.

The doctor reiterated Sam's diagnosis and handed him pamphlet after pamphlet about what he needed to do and not do, what could happen if he didn't take it seriously. The only thing Sam really wanted to know was the only question the doctor couldn't answer — _why_. Since Sam couldn't give much of a family history, the doctor said it might've been inherited or maybe a virus had randomly attacked his pancreas. It didn't really matter, the doctor explained, his voice deep and kind in a way that made Sam feel like crying again. What was important was what Sam did with his future. Sam just nodded and took the pamphlets and tried to keep his shit together.

The good news was that Sam could get all of the IVs out — he wasn't dehydrated anymore, and his blood sugar was down to just a little bit high instead of massively, dangerously high. He started to just poke at his bland hospital-food lunch, but the nurse practitioner's instructions about how he needed to make sure to eat well to balance the insulin he'd be taking nagged at him until he forced himself to finish the dry turkey and mushy green beans.

If Sam had thought the nurse practitioner's visit was overwhelming, the social worker was worse. The guy was nice, but there was so much paperwork, so many things he didn't want to think about. Sam would be able to have follow-up visits with a doctor at the student health center without having to pay, but he might have to go to a real endocrinologist too, and he'd have to buy insulin and all kinds of supplies that his student health plan didn't cover, not to mention the ambulance ride and the hospital stay.

Sam started to feel the breath choke up in his chest at the impossibility of paying for everything, but the social worker patted him on the shoulder and helped him fill out the paperwork for Medicaid. Given that Sam was a full-time student with little income and no parental support, the guy said he was sure it would be approved. Sam could only hope he was right.

The hospital released Sam that evening, and he took a shuttle back to his dorm, dressed in the clothes Jess had left for him and clutching a bag filled with pamphlets and booklets and printouts that he was supposed to read, plus a glucose monitor and a bunch of other supplies to get him started.

"Dude," his roommate said when Sam walked through the door, looking at Sam with a weird mix of surprise and trepidation.

"Here," Sam said, handing Justin a printout intended for "family and household members." Justin was sure as hell not family, but Sam didn't want Jess reaming him out again for not telling his roommate about his...condition.

Sam was exhausted, the night in the hospital and the day filled with way too much new information weighing down his whole body. He looked through his papers to make sure he'd done everything he needed to do for the night and then toed out of his shoes and climbed into bed.

The rest of the academic year was a balancing act that made Sam yearn for the days of trying to fit in high school classwork around Dad's hunting and training schedule. He had class and studying and his student worker job, and around all of that he had to figure out when to eat and what to eat and how to use all of the supplies his Medicaid card paid for.

The best thing, the thing that made Sam smile when he was fucking sick and tired of dealing with everything, was Jess. They met for that second try at a first date, and then ended up staying at the restaurant talking so long that they had to be shooed out the door when the staff was preparing to close the place down for the night. After that, they were just _together_. The fact that Jess knew some of what he was going through didn't make Sam love her, but the way she looked at him like he was normal, like he was strong — in contrast to Justin's nervous glances, as though Sam was about to fall over at any given moment — made spending time with her the best part of his day.

He screwed up a few times, even though he tried to do everything right. A couple times, Justin had to shove a bottle of juice into Sam's hands when he woke up with his blood sugar crashing, and one time he ended up shaky and sick, hugging the toilet after too many celebratory cupcakes. Still, the doctor at the student health center said Sam was doing well, and Sam felt better than he had in a couple months.

His weight filled back in, and with the doctor's help Sam started working out again — not Winchester-style military training, but lifting weights and running at the gym on campus. Again, he screwed up a few times before he figured out how to balance eating, exercise and insulin, but he handled it. He just had to eat a few glucose tablets, sit and rest on the weight bench or the end of the treadmill until he could go get a protein bar out of his gym bag. The staff at the gym kept an eye out for him, and he started to believe that everything would be okay.

The summer was hard, trying to eat right without his dining plan, but he got a job in a warehouse, moving around boxes and endlessly feeding handfuls of paper into a big industrial shredder, then crushing it all into a bale and starting over again. He rented a tiny, sparsely furnished room from a middle aged woman whose very sweet Doberman had some kind of bladder control problem, and he spent too much money on phone minutes so that he could talk to Jess just about every night.

School started up again, and Sam roomed with Justin again because a) better the devil you know, and b) at least Justin already knew about the whole diabetes thing. Sam went home with Jess over winter break and met her family, and by the next fall she wheedled Sam into moving in to the apartment she was renting. Sam's financial aid wasn't enough for him to pay anywhere near half of the rent and utilities, but Jess didn't want to talk about it, and finally Jess's mother called Sam and told him to stop being ridiculous, that they were paying for the apartment whether Sam lived in it or not.

Jess took care of Sam on the rare occasions his blood sugar got drastically out of whack, and Sam massaged Jess's back when she got cramps, and a future with Jess started to seem like a real thing, something solid that Sam would be able to hold in his hand just as soon as he had the money to buy her a ring.

And then Dean came, and Sam was only going to be spending a couple of days with him so there was no need to tell him about the diabetes. He didn't want Dean to worry, didn't want to see pity or fear or anything like that on Dean's face. He came home to Jess's cookies, the magical family recipe made with whole wheat flour and fake sugar that somehow still tasted amazing.

And then Sam's happy life, his bright future, fell apart into blood and fire and smoke and the cold barrel of a shotgun in Sam's hands. All of his supplies burned up with the rest of Sam's life, and that first night he didn't think about it. Didn't take his insulin, didn't want to eat anyway, didn't sleep. In the morning he walked out of the motel room while Dean was still sleeping. He went to the pharmacy and bought a new glucose monitor and as many supplies as he could, his savings paying for what the Medicaid card didn't cover.

He meant to tell Dean, give him the rundown on what to watch out for, but everything he could think of to say kept looping back around to Jess, and his throat would close up like he was still choking on smoke. So, he pushed himself through the days, checked his blood sugar, took his insulin, ate even when his stomach felt like a rock inside of him. Jess would kill him if he didn't take care of himself. She'd kill him.

Sam felt Dean watching him, every time he went off to the bathroom before a meal, every time he woke up feeling shaky. He kept a supply of peanut butter crackers and protein bars in his backpack, along with the glucose tablets and the emergency glucose injection kit. He took care of himself because if he wasn't healthy he wouldn't be strong enough to take out the thing that killed Jess. And if he couldn't back up his brother, if something happened to Dean because of Sam's disease, Sam didn't think he could survive that.

Every day, every time he stuck a needle into himself, he beat himself up for not telling Dean. But every time Dean tried to call Dad and got his voicemail instead, every time the load on Dean's shoulders became visibly heavier, Sam knew he couldn't add to that weight.

~~~

The hunt was over — one grave dug up, one set of bones burned to stop a spirit from terrorizing any more families. Sam sighed as Dean pulled the Impala into the parking lot of a diner; he was more than ready for a meal but didn't want to invite another one of the over-analyzing looks he'd been getting from Dean. His blood sugar readings had been running a little low, probably because his stomach was still touchy from a bad burger or something a few states back, but he was doing what he needed to do to get things back on track.

Inside the diner, he sat at the table with Dean long enough to order the hungry-man meatloaf special and then headed off to the restroom. Inside a stall, he tested his blood sugar — still a little low, but he was just about to eat a massive plate of food. He pulled an alcohol wipe, plus his syringe and insulin, out of his jacket pocket and injected himself in his side. A stomach cramp hit, and Sam was in the middle of using the bathroom stall for its intended purpose when the door to the bathroom swung open.

"Sammy?"

"Just a minute, Dean," Sam snapped, irritated that he couldn't have a few minutes of peace when he needed it.

"Gotta get a move on, seems that spirit's not quite as ganked as we thought."

"Shit," Sam grumbled to himself. He finished up and washed his hands, then met Dean in the hallway outside the men's room.

Dean had his jacket on, Sam's backpack in his hand, and Sam felt his stomach sinking. "Could we maybe stay and eat dinner first?"

"You won't starve in a couple of hours, come on. I bet you fifty bucks the spirit's attached to something in that attic. We find it, burn it, make sure everybody's safe, _then_ dinner."

There was no way for Sam to argue without explaining everything to Dean, so he just followed along, pulling a pack of crackers out of his backpack as he got into the car. They were fifteen minutes into the drive back to the hunt when Sam knew for sure that he'd fucked up his dosage. He finished the pack of crackers and even snuck a couple of glucose tablets out of his bag, but his blood sugar was dropping too fast. He felt cold, and when he reached a shaking hand up to his face it was covered in sweat.

"Dean." The road ahead was blurring in front of Sam's eyes, and he scrambled his hand around inside his backpack, trying to focus on what he needed to find. "Dean, pull over."

"What? Come on, Sam, we're almost there."

His hand was shaking hard, but he got his fingers wrapped around the slim case of the injection kit. "Dean, pull over. Pullover." Sam heard his words starting to slur and knew he didn't have much time to tell Dean what to do, knew his hands were shaking too hard to do it himself.

"What the — " Dean pulled over to the side of the road with a screech of breaks on blacktop, and Sam swung his legs out of the car, bent over in his seat trying to steady himself with fresh air. Then Dean was in front of him crouching down into Sam's foggy field of vision. "What's going on, you gonna puke?"

Sam shook his head, even though he knew the answer really was maybe. He held up the injection kit and shoved it vaguely in the direction of Dean's hands. "My stomach or my leg," Sam slurred. The trees in front of him blurred and shook, and Sam put both hands over his face.

"What the fuck? What the fuck is glucagon?" Dean's grumbling was comforting, but Sam needed that shot, needed it _now_.

"Deeeeean," he moaned from behind his hands.

"Okay, okay. Um, mix the powder, put in the needle, okay," Dean muttered to himself.

Sam felt hands on his belly then, hands pushing his shirt up, the cold touch of metal, and it wasn't right. He was supposed to be the only person with the needles, not anybody else. Sam pushed past Dean and rolled down onto the grass, scrambling away.

"Whoa, hey! Whoa!" There was weight on Sam's legs, pinning him down, more weight on his chest, and then the sharp prick of a needle in his belly. Defeated, he lay on his back, breathing heavily as the weight moved off of him. "Sam?" Dean's voice was quiet, the touch on Sam's forehead tentative. "Sammy?"

The world settled down around Sam as the sugar hit his bloodstream. He knew that there were things he needed to do, things he needed to say, but he just sat up, closed his eyes through a brief wash of dizziness, and scooted around to lean against the sun-warmed metal of the car. Dean had his phone in his hand, looked about thirty seconds away from calling 911, and Sam waved his hand in the air. "I'm okay."

"Yeah right." Dean knelt down in front of Sam again. "You look better than you did a minute ago but you're still pale and sweaty and look like you couldn't fight your way out of a kindergarten class. What the hell _was_ that?"

Sam hung his head, wishing for all the world that he had managed to explain all of this to Dean sometime, any time, before he was hit with a massive hypoglycemic episode. He sighed, no way to go back and change the past. "I'm dia — um." It was so hard to say.

"You're not _dying_ , Sammy. Jesus."

Sam shook his head. "Diabetic."

Dean opened his mouth wide and then closed it, scrunching up his forehead before taking another shot at answering. "What? But, what? I thought people got that when they were kind of old and fat, and you're nowhere near either of those things."

Sam rolled his eyes. "It's the other kind, Type I. Most people are diagnosed when they're pretty young. I got diagnosed about six months after I got to Stanford."

Dean sat down hard on his butt. "Why didn't you tell me?"

Sam ran a hand though his hair, feeling the sweat start to dissipate. "I kept meaning to. It's just, there's so much going on. Dad being missing." He sighed, whispered, "Jess."

"I know, I know." Dean's hand on his shoulder felt good, grounding. "But I mean before that. Something like that happens to you and you don't call me?" Dean's voice was raw, and Sam felt sick from guilt.

Then he just felt sick, turning to his side to heave up bile and peanut butter crackers next to the Impala's back wheel. Dean kept his hand steady on Sam's shoulder, but as soon as Sam's stomach settled he felt himself being tugged upwards. "What?"   
"Come on, hospital time."

"No, no, I just need to eat something. I'm okay."

"No dice. You look like shit, and I don't know anything about this, don't know how to watch your back." Dean's face was stolid, implacable. "Hospital."

Sam let Dean help him stand up and and let Dean tuck him back into the passenger seat. He still felt shaky and knew his blood sugar was still low, but he didn't want to test it in front of Dean, not like this. He let Dean guide him as they walked through the big, sliding ER doors, and before much time passed he was on a gurney in a little curtained off room, with an IV in his hand and a doctor lecturing him about taking care of himself.

By the time the doctor let Sam leave a few hours later, Dean had harassed the staff into giving him a bundle of pamphlets and booklets and printouts that looked suspiciously similar to the ones Sam had brought back with him to the dorm, nearly three years before. As they got back into the Impala, Sam remembered where they'd been headed in the first place. "Hey, what about finishing up this hunt?"

"Fuck that spirit, it can wait until tomorrow. I called the Meltons back and told them to stay in the hotel another night — nobody else is going to get hurt." Dean drove back to the same motel they'd checked out of several hours earlier, and when Sam tried to help with carrying in their gear Dean waved him off, piled all of the bags on himself and shepherded Sam into the room.

Dean dumped the bags on the floor in front of the TV and then dropped the pile of medical literature on his bed. Sam sat down on his own bed, holding his backpack and feeling like he was still thirteen years old — weak and angry and utterly out of control of his own life.

"You feel okay?" Dean asked, rounding the foot of Sam's bed.

"I'm _fine_. They wouldn't let me go until my blood sugar was in the normal range. I just have to keep an eye on it, and I know how to do that, okay? I know how to take care of myself."

"You do not get a fucking free pass on not telling me about this. I mean, okay, you were at college, and you didn't want anything to do with me or Dad. Fine, whatever. You had friends, right?" Dean gentled his voice. "Your girlfriend. They knew?"

"Yeah." Sam nodded, remembering again Jess at the hospital just after he'd found out himself. "Yeah, pretty much everybody knew."

"And they kept an eye out for you?"

"I took care of _myself_. I had school and work and working out, and I figured it out. I took care of myself just fine, nobody had to be my personal nurse."

"Okay, right, but let me guess that these friends of yours wouldn't have dragged you away from the table when you were expecting a meal. And they would've known what to look out for, what to do if you had one of these episodes instead of fumbling around trying to read the instructions on an injection kit while you became fucking incoherent. Am I wrong?"

Sam sighed. He'd never really thought about what it meant to have his friends, to have _Jess_ watching his back because they'd been there from the beginning and Jess, at least, never made a big deal about it. "You're not wrong. I'm sorry I didn't tell you. Honestly. But I need you to trust me to be an adult and take care of this myself."

Dean sat down on the bed, his shoulders bowed for a minute before sitting up straight and turning to face Sam. "How about this? I trust you to take care of yourself — as long as you don't seem sick. You seem off, I'm not just going to sit back and let you keel over. You can't expect me to do that. And in exchange, you have to promise me full disclosure. If you're having trouble keeping things in balance, you tell me. You need to eat or whatever, you tell me."

"I'm not going to report my blood sugar readings to you every day like I'm a little kid or something."

"Jesus, Sam. I'm not asking you to. Just, like what happened today — I heard you tell the doctor you were already having problems before we skipped dinner, that you got a stomach bug or whatever. Something like that happens again, you _tell_ me so I can keep an eye out."

Sam tilted his head in concession. "Like you're not going to be watching me anyway."

"We watch each other's backs, that's the way it works." Dean shot Sam a lazy smirk, and like that everything felt normal again. "So, before I go start reading my way through that shit on the bed, why don't you tell me what's in this backpack you've been carrying around like a teddy bear? I thought you were trying to hide your porn stash from me, all the time you spend with it in the bathroom."

"Dean!" Sam shook his head and laughed before pulling out his glucose monitor. Knowing Dean, he'd geek out over the gadget, try to figure out how to make one from a remote control or something. Dean stole one of his granola bars and munched on it while he turned the monitor around in his hand. Sam made a mental note to start carrying extra snacks but he felt lighter than he had since Dean first climbed through his living room window.

He didn't have to lie to Dean anymore, not about anything important, and he promised himself to remember this feeling, to tell Dean the truth no matter what came up down the road. They were better off having each other's backs. Always. 


End file.
